Let a supplier submit documents to a queue

Description

A queue can be opened so that someone outside Automize – typically a supplier or a customer's own system – can submit documents and data to it directly. The work lands in the queue like any other item and is processed by your automation as normal.

Nothing is accepted until you say what is acceptable. A queue you have switched on but not described will refuse every submission, which is deliberate: the sender is told exactly what was wrong rather than having a half-understood document accepted.

Opening a queue

Open the queue, choose External ingest from its menu, and work down the panel:

1. Accept external submissions – the master switch. Turning it off later closes the queue immediately but keeps everything you declared, so you can pause a supplier without rebuilding the setup.
2. Accepts – data only, files only, or both.
3. File type and size – the limit is built into the upload itself, so an oversized file fails before it reaches us rather than being uploaded and then rejected.
4. Refuse unrecognised fields – leave this on. With it off, a misspelled field name is silently ignored and the sender is never told, which is how a supplier comes to believe they sent something you never received.

Declaring fields

Add one field per piece of information the sender will provide. The name must be exactly what they send, spaces and capitalisation included – Display Policy Number and displayPolicyNumber are different fields.

Choose the type that matches the data. A code list type is worth using wherever the sender picks from a fixed set of values: it rejects anything outside the list at the door, instead of letting an unexpected value through to fail inside your process later.

Mark a field required if a submission without it is meaningless.

Refusing duplicates

Tick part of the duplicate key on the fields that together identify a submission uniquely – often a reference number, sometimes a reference plus a sequence number. Once set, the same values cannot be submitted twice.

This matters more than it first appears. Senders retry when a connection times out, and without a duplicate key you cannot tell a genuine resubmission from a network hiccup. Only required fields can form part of the key: an optional one would change the key simply by being absent.

If you leave the key unset, duplicates are accepted and your process must handle them.

Issuing a key

Use Issue key in the same panel to create a credential for the sender. Give it their name so you can tell keys apart later.

The key is shown once. Copy it before closing the panel – it cannot be retrieved afterwards, only replaced.

Each key reaches that one queue and nothing else, so issue one per sender. Revoking a key stops that sender immediately and affects nobody else.

When a sender says they sent it

Refused submissions are listed under Refused submissions on the queue page, newest first, with the reason the sender was given and the reference and filename they used.

This is the panel to open when someone insists a document was sent. A refusal is reported to the sender at the moment it happens, so if it is listed here, they were told; if it is not listed and no item exists, it never arrived.

Related

• QUEUE functions overview: how queues, items and performers fit together.
• List queue items: reading the items a queue holds.